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Airbus cockpit engine reduce speed sound12/29/2023 ![]() ![]() The unambiguous predictability of the phrases ends up preparing all parties to deal with the unpredictable. But the formulaic language is powerful and reassuring because everyone understands exactly what is intended, what the other party is signifying, what all expect to happen next. Thus you’ll hear the pilot saying variations on: “Toronto Tower, FedEx 247, Runway 06 Left, cleared for takeoff. The unvarying and therefore comforting nature of “ATC speak.” (ATC means Air Traffic Control.) Pilots are taught early on that the basic structure of any transmission to ATC is: Who they are, Who you are, Where you are, What you want. I do encourage you to listen, because much of the significance of the exchange is in its tone. You can hear the eight minutes of exchanges between controllers and the pilot 4 in this YouTube clip, along with an animation meant to recreate the plane’s flight path. And that is what the controllers unflappably helped them to do. It would be like driving down a freeway with one of the car’s wheels spinning in reverse. So when this FedEx crew determined that, for some reason, a thrust reverser on one engine had deployed, they knew immediately that the flight couldn’t go on. Safety systems are supposed to block the reversers from activating until the plane’s wheels are down. Back in 1991, all 233 people aboard a Boeing 767 737 flown by Lauda airlines, of Austria, died when a thrust reverser somehow deployed while the plane was cruising and sent it into an unrecoverable dive. The thrust reversers would normally never be used in flight. This is especially useful if the runway’s surface is icy or slick. Why would such a device exist? Because thrust reversers can augment the plane’s normal brakes in bringing it to a stop after touch-down. Thus it harnesses the engine’s power to slow the plane down, rather than to speed it up. It re-directs much of the force of a jet engine’s airflow forward, rather than backward. This was potentially a very serious problem.Ī thrust reverser is basically an airplane’s speed brake. For still unknown reasons its “thrust reverser” engaged. ![]() Very soon after takeoff, something went badly wrong with one of the engines. Like the DC-10 it has three engines: one under each wing and a third in the tail. This is a big plane, essentially a longer version of the familiar DC-10. The plane was a McDonnell Douglas MD-11. Presumably it held a lot of cargo, but the only people aboard were the two pilots. Last week, on the morning of June 21, a FedEx cargo plane was taking off from Pearson international airport in Toronto. Following it, in a subscriber section, I’ll attach a more detailed annotation on the transcript of what you’ve heard. I’ll do a brief set-up, and then include the embedded video for you to see for yourself-which I hope you’ll do. It comes from the “ You Can See ATC ” YouTube site, and it is 8 minutes long. The tenser and higher-stakes the situation, the deeper, slower, and calmer the controllers make their voices sound. 1 But anyone who has dealt with controllers as a pilot recognizes the shift in a controller’s tone when something is starting to go wrong. Airline passengers rarely get to hear the back-and-forth between pilots and controllers. In particular I’ve called out air traffic controllers for their culture of unflappable competence. That’s one reason I’ve written so often about the procedures, the cooperation, the accountability that have made commercial air travel so astoundingly safe. But the emotional power of aerial mishaps is undeniable. You’re vastly safer on an airliner than in a car, on a staircase, or almost anywhere else. Peril in the skies has an outsized hold on our imaginations. This happened to a FedEx crew recently in Toronto. An illustration from a GE video, showing what happens when an aircraft jet engine goes into “thrust reversal” mode and suddenly slows the plane down rather than speeding it up. ![]()
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